


Mer Jul

by Catznetsov



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Christmas Music, M/M, and this will be on the wrong side of history but it looked better, one day we'll legislate how Vrana's nickname is spelled
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-26
Updated: 2017-12-26
Packaged: 2019-02-21 22:07:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,075
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13152987
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Catznetsov/pseuds/Catznetsov
Summary: “Why is ghost singing medley of popular Christmas songs?” Alex demands.





	Mer Jul

**Author's Note:**

> For the sinbin prompt "one of the Caps (oh please oh please Nicky) secretly being an incredible singer and his teammates finding out."
> 
> tbh now I've witnessed the majestic Evgeny Kuznetsov (whose speaking voice already sounds suspiciously like the noisemaker from a rubber chicken being blown through a trombone) making...mouth sounds, I no longer know what music is or can ever be. But I tried

“No, there isn’t a mermaid in the showers at Kettler,” Dima says. He and Zhenya are both such country boys sometimes. What, Alex can’t ever be right just because he got scared of that noise chipmunks make one time?

“What, in the pipes? Haunting the boiler room?” Zhenya asks sardonically from the floor, around whatever he has in his mouth.

“Maybe it’s a ghost,” Vee volunteers. “Maybe it’s the ghost of a famous singer who performed here a hundred years ago. But her voice was so beautiful everyone falls in love and her husband was very horrible, so finally she took a lover, her pianist, and her husband killed her, cut off her head.”

The Czech are a lovely people. Dima closes his eyes in prayer, but Evgeny actually pushes himself up on an elbow to inspect Vee. Alex can see he’s gnawing on a candy cane. “So how’s she singing, then?” he finally says.

To his credit, Vee stares him down. “How else she gonna find her missing head?” he says. Apparently Dima and Zhenya both find that acceptable.

“Can we get back to me, please?” Alex says. “And why this singing’s been following me since November?”

“I like Vee’s ghost thing,” Zhenya says, and sucks obnoxiously.

“That’s what happened in the theater in my grandmother’s town,” Vee demurs. “She’s on the, um, committee?”

“Why is ghost singing medley of popular Christmas songs?” Alex demands.

They all blink at him.

“Your first guess was mermaid,” Dima says, reprovingly. “‘Dmitry,’ he says, ‘why is invisible creature with most beautiful voice always singing when I’m washing up? Think it’s mermaid?’ Now he says, ‘oh, it’s singing Christmas song.’ No, Sasha, what the fuck.”

“Is what I say!” Alex protests, but children these days have no respect. “You don’t hear this?”

“It’s Christmas,” Zhenya says. “Americans get, around Christmas, you know,” and waves his candy cane to illustrate. Vee is watching like an underfed hawk. “Maybe it’s just people very excited for holiday.”

“Who been giving you candy? You bring for everyone?” Alex feels Nicky’s spirit say with Alex’s mouth. “And it’s not just Americans. I know it, every time, it’s same voice. Here, I get a little on video, see—“

“Did you—“

“Yes, yes, in the showers,” Zhenya says, and supervises to make sure Vee has his eyes covered. “Okay, play.” Alex ramps the volume up and plays the little video, tinny with the sound of falling water. Dima has time to roll his eyes at them before one faint note between the drops rises, a high clear sustained syllable, and then settles back into a low melody. Even on Alex’s iPhone speakers you can tell the sound is toffee-rich, a big voice pitched low, and Alex is twitching to turn around as though whoever it is might be right there behind him now.

The clip ends. Zhenya sits up properly, tapping Vee’s knee and passing off the candy cane. “Okay,” he says, and looks at Alex the way he sometimes does, straight-on and steady. Alex frankly wishes he wouldn’t. Alex prefers not to be understood by anyone but Nicky—it’s their special thing, and also if he pretends it’s only because he likes Nicky best and lets him understand, then it doesn’t need to bother him when most people don’t. But he’d especially like to seem chill about this, at least until he has some idea why he isn’t. “Okay, Sasha. Sure. We can figure this one out.”

“Sure,” Vee echoes.

Dima just sounds pained. But he’s the one who snatches John’s phone after practice and makes him replay a video of Luca mostly-managing to skate, volume up so Alex can hear a low voice singing somewhere in the distance. Then someone hears it in the background of André’s sulky workout snaps, meaning who- or whatever it is must be haunting the rink and their weight room as well as the showers. Zhenya confiscates Tom’s phone and André’s, while Vee lifts the other new guys’. André has captured a treasure trove of ghostly holiday pop, and better sound quality than Alex got.

“He films everything,” Zhenya says. “It’s not, like, whoever it is likes him better than you.”

“Merry Christmas, Zhenya,” Alex says.

He takes the phones home, and limits himself to one listen a day for the rest of the week before their Christmas break, and spends the rest of the days wondering over it so that when he hears it again he almost thinks it’s in his own earbuds. He catches the thread of it three or four more times, curling down long hallways or passing by the weight room door just as he’s locked into a set.

He relents when André gets lost and has to ask a Salvation Army Santa for directions to the nearest grocery store, and sends all the videos to himself before relinquishing the phones.

“I didn’t say you should give it back,” Nicky says behind him in the break room, a laugh brewing in his voice. He leans in over Alex’s shoulder, trying to see, and Alex tips his face up and turns the phone away. Nicky’s hair tickles his forehead. “He needs to learn someday. Tom thinks you’re hazing him, so he’s happy. What are you doing?”

“Very important secret,” Alex says. Looking up now the light catches gold through Nicky’s hair like dozens of tiny Christmas lights. Nicky hums, obviously lulling him before he’ll lunge for the phone. But Alex keeps his posture steady under Nicky’s weight, not giving any sign that Alex might have relaxed enough to leave an opening, and Nicky keeps on humming. The little sound feels like a lion’s purr in Nicky’s chest against Alex’s shoulder blades, his cheek pressed to his temple, and Alex knows this fucking tune.

“Nicky,” he says, “Why you been singing Christmas song in showers since November?”

“I have not,” Nicky lies.

“Beginning of November, Nicky. That’s too much Christmas. But you have best voice. How come you never let me hear you sing before?”

He feels Nicky shrug, slow, like he’s trying to think how to play this off. “Best, Nicky,” he says, again.

“I sing when I think, I guess,” Nicky says. “Don’t need to think around you.”

Alex finds that acceptable, he supposes. “You been thinking lots more, though?” he checks.

Nicky says, “Yeah,” and doesn’t continue. But he turns his face into Alex’s hair and Alex feels him draw a deliberate breath.

**Author's Note:**

> Happy holidays. I hope the end of the year brings some peace for you all, and you bring peace to the new one


End file.
